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Joint | March 4, 2015 | Committee Room | Public Safety

[blank audio] Good morning. Is this on? Good morning, can you hear me?
It seems like it’s on. They can’t hear they said. They said I should get
up close and personal. Can you hear me now? They can’t. Can you all hear
me back there? Can you all hear me? [background chatter] Can you hear me
now? Can you hear me now? Thank you. We’re gonna go ahead and start.
We’ve got another couple of committee chairs up here so I wanted to wait
until they got in here, but they said I needed to be up close here. I
wanted to remind you all that these little things on the table are, when
they are red they are not on. If you want to talk turn them green. If
you’re afraid you’re gonna say something and it’s gonna go out to the
world, then you might wanna keep them on red but that’s up to you, but
that’s what they’re there for. I’ve got to tell you about our pages this
morning. We’ve got two, Alexis if you would tell us something, I think
I’ve got you, Alexis Powell from Greenville and Don Davis is her
sponsor. [SPEAKER CHANGES] My name’s Alexis Powel. Don Davis is my
sponsor and I’m from Greenville, North Carolina and I’m a senior in high
school. [SPEAKER CHANGES] Welcome. Glad to have you here. We also have
Drew West from Buckham County and Michelle Presnell is his sponsor.
[SPEAKER CHANGES] Hi, my name’s Drew West. I’m from Buckham County. I’m
a junior this year and I’ve always been involved in state government. I
just wanted the experience here. [SPEAKER CHANGES] Welcome. Glad to have
you here. Hope you learn a lot today. Also the Sergeant at Arms today
are Barry Moore, okay, from the House and BH Powell from the House and
we have Charles Marcalis if we need a football player and we need a
saxophone player we’re good. Thank you. Good to have you here too. Jim
Hamilton, too, also. Welcome. They help us this morning. Okay, we’re
gonna be having William Taubes show today again. He’s starting out again
talking about AOC again, so welcome. Oh, do the chairs have anything to
say? Thank you. [SPEAKER CHANGES] Thank you, Madam Chair. [??] Oops, no,
that’s my [??] . We’re gonna go back through the technology part of the
presentation yesterday. We got a couple slides in and I cut out all the
administration parts leading up to this. [SPEAKER CHANGES] And if you
have questions during the time just raise your hand and we’ll recognize
you inside, okay? [SPEAKER CHANGES] Yes, ma’am. So, technology is again
a major part of the administrative budget. It’s about 64% and we saw
this slide yesterday. [SPEAKER CHANGES] [??] [SPEAKER CHANGES] Sorry, do
I need to speak up? Can you all hear me? Okay, I’m very sorry about
that. We’re apparently having microphone issues. All right, so we went
over this slide yesterday. This is the technology services division at
AOC. I did want to point out again that the application development
section is the software development section, so those 83 FTE are
responsible for the I guess around 14 major systems, software systems
that AOC, that AOC supports, has created and supports for people in the
court system. This does include those legacy systems, so AOC does have
to hire people with very specific knowledge of older computer languages
to help handle the ASIS and the SMS system which has created some
challenges for them. The 61 FTE for the infrastructure and operations
support, those are the help desk people, the people that come out and
put computers on desks, the people that deal with the actual hardware of
the computer system and then there are 3 FTE for planning in the
technology services division. Let’s see, I’m not getting ahead of myself
here.

Yesterday we talked a lot about the ACIS system and the financial
management system. These are legacy systems that… let’s see… that look
like that. That’s the ACIS clerk component, and this is the slide that
we stopped at yesterday. This is… there we go… legacy system facts. 1.2
million transactions daily in ACIS. 2.2 million filings in fiscal year
13-14. 2.4 million dispositions that year. ACIS was first implemented in
1982 – we did talk about that yesterday – and spread to 99 counties by
1990. The CCIS-CC, which is providing a new updated frontend and more
database capabilities, but still using some of the ACIS database, was
first implemented in 2006. I don’t think this issue got pointed out well
enough yesterday: ACIS has… there’s some quality control issues that AOC
has brought up in terms of entirely moving ACIS to a new system. There’s
so much data in ACIS that to move all of that data to a new system,
there is a certain level of corruption that may result, and auditing
that data to find the corruption will create a whole new level of
challenge in terms of moving the entirety of ACIS to a new system, so I
do want to keep that out there, that there are some concerns with
completely abandoning the ACIS database, just because if you’re a
criminal and your record gets corrupted, then that’s probably good for
you, but it may not be good for the rest of us, so… and I think… I
didn’t mention my facts about FMS. Sorry about that. FMS was created
somewhat later, but there was a statewide rollout in ’91 through ’95,
which is not very much longer than the statewide rollout for ACIS, and
FMS is the major bookkeeping software used throughout the court system,
so we’ll be talking about dispersements from AOC later today, but more
than 740 million in 13-14 flowed through the court system and was
tracked by the FMS system. [SPEAKER CHANGES] ?? [SPEAKER CHANGES] When
these systems were first developed, did any federal money play a part in
this? Was there the Crime Commission or any federal moneys at all used?
[SPEAKER CHANGES] Thank you, Madam Chair. I do not know the answer to
that and I will have to get back to you. I will discuss it with AOC.
They’re shaking their heads “no”. Oh, they’re saying they don’t know.
The problem with reaching back to 1982 is that there’s not a lot of us
who have the answers. [SPEAKER CHANGES] We won’t go there. I’m sorry.
[SPEAKER CHANGES] If you could, we would like to perhaps get some
information from other parts of the country, other states that may have
gotten federal grants to update their systems. Just check into that.
[SPEAKER CHANGES] Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes sir, I will. [SPEAKER
CHANGES] Senator Randleman. [SPEAKER CHANGES] Thank you, Madam Chair. On
page 7 in bold print, that says the AOC has quality control concerns
regarding replacing ACIS. Could we have them elaborate on that as to
what those concerns are in a little bit more detail? [SPEAKER CHANGES]
Is there someone here who can speak to that? Jeff Marecic, please.
Identify yourself. [SPEAKER CHANGES] Jeff Marecic, CIO for AOC. I don’t
know if I would have bold-faced it. It’s not a concern that would
prevent us from moving forward with it. I think what Mr. Childs is
pointing out is that there are millions of records in the database that
we call IMS, and we will need to move that to a new database, and when
we move that, sometimes the formats change and those kinds of things,
but it’s a very

The whole thing of what technology does when we modernize it, so the
rule’s a concern there but it certainly is not a road block at all. We
have process in place to deal with that. [SPEAKER CHANGES] I know when
DHHS was getting their new one and they were supposed to stop at some
point because your laws were doing every day and I know it’s taken them
a long time and a bunch of money, so I can understand your concern on
that. [SPEAKER CHANGES] Follow up. [SPEAKER CHANGES] Okay, yeah.
[SPEAKER CHANGES] Can you elaborate on, you said that that is not a road
block for moving and followers? [SPEAKER CHANGES] Well, as we move from
the legacy software, so it’s, the programming language is called [??]
and the database is called IMS, it’s a different way of storing data.
When we move to the new systems, the programming language for the most
part is called Java and the database is called DB2, which is a different
way of storing data, and so, and a different way of accessing data, and
so when you move it from the one type of database to the other type of
database, sometimes you have to change how that database is accessed,
some are keyed, sometimes the data formats are different. For example,
the way newer databases store numbers is somewhat different than others,
and so we’ll just have to. [SPEAKER CHANGES] Follow up. [SPEAKER
CHANGES] Follow up. [SPEAKER CHANGES] I understand [??] this committee
are not gonna be [??] [SPEAKER CHANGES] Okay. [SPEAKER CHANGES] So what
I’m saying is do we have plans to replace that and if so how does that
fit on your priority list. [SPEAKER CHANGES] We do have plans to replace
ASIS and the part that we’re talking about right now probably is one of
the last parts that actual physical movement of the data today. We have
ways of accessing the data where it exists so we are concentrating on
the funding, the screens, then the functionality, get that worked over
and then at the last stage, then we’ll move the data over. [SPEAKER
CHANGES] Follow up. [SPEAKER CHANGES] [??] time. [SPEAKER CHANGES] The
timeframe really depends on how the priorities plan out. If we were to
focus on that project solely right now that would probably be a 6, about
a 6 year project. Now we have it laid out in stages. Now that’s assuming
current technology and current resources to do that. If there was no
additional resources it would be able to move a little faster. [SPEAKER
CHANGES] Representative Boles. [SPEAKER CHANGES] In [??] have we
developed this [??] ? If we could write it and design it [??] early in
the morning on [??] [SPEAKER CHANGES] Yes, I, yes we designed that.
[SPEAKER CHANGES] I guess I, my concern is the, when you do a [??] to
this and I see maybe to 8 years to [??] to take a look in 6 years. I
think what was said. [??] [SPEAKER CHANGES] Identify and. [SPEAKER
CHANGES] I’m sorry. [SPEAKER CHANGES] [??] again. [SPEAKER CHANGES] Just
another comment. I don’t need anything else. [SPEAKER CHANGES] Okay, all
right. Senator Newton. [SPEAKER CHANGES] Thank you, Madam Chairman. So
these questions are [??] about senator before you leave. I listened to
the [??] . This is just the [??] discuss the interfaces [??] help with
all of it, not just the [??] part of it. What is your response to
Senator Randleman’s [??] I’m not sure [??] yesterday I couldn’t hear. I
actually, maybe this is for Joe Smith. I’m not sure. I don’t see him
here today, so how long has there been a determination that agencies
needed a [??] ? How many years has that been that AOC made that
determination. [SPEAKER CHANGES] By yourself. [SPEAKER CHANGES] Jeff
Murray, Chief Information Officer

AOC. The first component of CCISCC, which is one of the systems that is
replacing ASIS, was released in 2006. So the need to replace ASIS was, a
decision was made some time before that, maybe a year or two before that
so that that first release was built.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
So if I understand correctly, and I realize this predated your presence
at AOC, it obviously predated most of this committee's appearance
here in General Assembly, I won't tell you about what I was doing in
2006 but if I understand you correctly then at least ten years ago a
decision was made by AOC that gauges needed to be replaced. Is that
correct?
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Correct.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
I would call confident and I thank you, sir, for answering the question.
I'm sure I'm thinking the same thing that everybody in this room
is thinking, everybody around this table is thinking. A decision was
made ten-plus years ago that gauges needed to be replaced. Ten-plus
years ago there wasn't all this budget cutting going on. Ten-plus
years ago, apparently we had plenty of money to spend on the court
system. I wasn't here but there was a lot more money then than there
is now and here we are talking today about it's going to take six
years, from whenever we hit the go button, to replace ASIS. So we're
going to be, what, 20 years into the process of replacing the system by
the time we put the system in place, it's going to be time to
replace that system?
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
It's a big concern. Do you have a comment?
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Yes. Jeff Murray, CIO, AOC. During that time, Senator Newton those are
good observations, during that time let's also remember that other
systems have been developed and implemented. For example, the NCAWARE
project, so as the ASIS replacement project got going, the NCAWARE
project was also became a higher priority. So there had been some
resource shifts in order to get that project done as well, eCitation was
another project that came through at the same time. So it's not as
if all the resources were focused on just replacing ASIS. There were a
number of other projects.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Okay, just a moment, and I just want to remind anybody speaking that
we're being recorded and we need to know exactly who you are
speaking each time so please introduce yourself. Okay, let me go to
Senator Jackson.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Thank you, Madam Chair. My understanding from listening to Jeff was that
he said it would be in six years to replace ASIS if they devoted all of
their technology resources to that, which they certainly can't. So
we were looking at a situation where it's six years in the best of
all best case scenarios. I'd like to loop in Mr. Tom Murray. He sent
all of us an email specifically about this and I just had a chance to
look at it this morning, most people probably haven't, I was just
wondering if you could elaborate a little bit on this topic since you
sent all of us an email on it.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Thank you, Senator Jackson. Thank you, Madam Chair. Tom Murray, I'm
Chief Legal Counsel of Governor Affairs for AOC. There has been much
progress made on the replacement of ASIS using the CCIS technology,
it's undergoing. If you look on the slide that I presented to you
yesterday in the email, there is a slide that shows you the road map to
eCourts, which is essentially where we need to go and what we've
accomplished thus far. There's a significant amount of resources
being allocated with the existing appropriations to help replace the
green screens in every court house in the state of North Carolina and
the public access for criminal records will be rolled out statewide in
June. So you'll be able to go to a courthouse and search criminal
records, instead of a green screen with a web based, parameter based
computer screen, which is a completely, it's a major shift,
replacing those green screens, to help attorneys and help folks in
clerks offices. But I don't think it's a, I wouldn't say
that we haven't done anything. We've made some significant
progresses on transitioning from ASIS to CCIS that helps out the
district attorneys, that helps out the clerks. I think if you asked the
clerks and the DA's how much change has been made from an IT
perspective for them to be able to do

do their job, they will say that it's a dramatic shift over the past
six years and so I think those are some constituents groups you might
not want to consider talking to about this on the changes that have been
made. But we also respond to the general assembly, so when you want us
to roll out pay and fee ticket, we did that. We did it faster than you
asked us to and we did it, instead of doing a pilot we rolled it out
statewide faster than you asked us to. And same thing with NCAWARE and
real-time access to CJLEADS. We respond to the General Assembly. When
you ask us to do something, we do it, and that occupies time and
resources. So we will follow your direction on be able to, if you want
to make ASIS a priority, that's probably $100 Million conversation.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Thank you, Representative Turner.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Thank you, Representative Turner ??, and I wanted to know from Mrs. ??
if the availability of resources to work on more than one system if
possible at this time and maybe I didn't read it ?? because I'm
not talking about money but is there, technologically, a way to update
more than one system at a time, ??
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Mr. Murray
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Jeff Murray, Chief Information Officer, AOC. We always have more than
one project going at one time. As a matter of fact, as we speak I think
we have about ten or twelve various projects going. We're always
working on all of our systems. We have updates and enhancements to
CISDA, we have those to CC, we have those to a lot of our interfaces and
a lot of other systems. Now, one of the interesting dynamics here that I
think is important to talk about is of the resources that Mr. Childs
mentioned a little bit earlier, about the number of staff people we
have, approximately 85-90% of those folks are dedicated to make sure
that the applications that we have in place today are working. So that
when you come into the office every morning they, your screen, gets you
to where you need to be. That leaves about 15% of our available staff,
our permanent staff, to work on enhancements. And so, if we look at that
15%, those are the ones that are dedicated to enhancing or modernizing
ASIS and systems of other applications. Now, when we have a budget cut,
when we reduce our budget by $500,000, that results in positions and so
me, as the CIO, I have a responsibility to make sure that when all of
our users and our constituencies come in to work their applications
work. So when I make cuts, I have to make cuts to certain less critical
parts of the organization and so I really can't do much cutting on
the operational side. So that 85% has to be there so that everybody
could work. So where those kinds of cuts come from are from the 15%. So
as we reduce that , our ability to work on more things diminishes.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Follow-up.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Follow-up.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
So the four people that left were all in technology?
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
They were all in technology and they were all only in our application
group, that's our analysts and our developers, came from that part
of the organization.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Follow-up.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Is there any effort to ?? at this time, I know we're concentrating
on ??.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
We don't have a plan right now for FMS.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Representative McNeill.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Okay, this question will be also for you. I know one of the
considerations, not only with the current ASIS system, FMS or whatever
you want the security, have you had any particular challenges in going
from the green screen to a web based as far as security. I know security
is a big part of these records, we all talk about availability of
records but we want what is available to also be secure. How are we
handling that?
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Jeff Murray, CIO AOC. Thank you for that question, Representative
McNeill. You're right. One of the things, one of the advantages, if
you will, of the green screens and that type of technology is that
it's been tried and true from a security perspective for

for a very long time. It’s a very secure environment to keep things in.
As we move that functionality to the web-based systems, we do have an
increased security concern, and part of that 85% of our resources that
we talked about were the security team, a number of folks, to make sure
that we have the right security measures in place, so it is an elevated
concern for us that we are addressing, and you’re right; we have to take
that very seriously. [SPEAKER CHANGES] Follow-up. [SPEAKER CHANGES] Has
that in any way impacted your timeline in rolling this out? Has it
slowed you down, had no impact? [SPEAKER CHANGES] Well… Jeff Marecic,
CIO to the AOC. It’s another concern that we have to build in to our
application, so when we develop a new module, we have to be sure that we
keep information security coding practices and networking practices in
place, so it is another step in the process that we have. [SPEAKER
CHANGES] Any other committee members have any questions? Senator Newton.
[SPEAKER CHANGES] Just for… I appreciate your comments before, and I’m
really pleased that there at AOC, we’ve had that conversation. I’d like
to invite you and to sit down privately and talk offline about the speed
at which AOC rolls out things like eCITATION and how quickly they can
process credit cards and so forth because your view of the speed of
things is quite different from mine and I know a number of members on
this committee. I’m certainly not speaking for all members on this
committee. I think it’s important that we all face the reality of where
we are today. Part of fixing the problem, in my view, is going to be
looking at “How did we get here?” Not for the purposes of blaming people
who don’t work at AOC anymore or anything like that, or blaming the
legislature for not giving good priorities. It’s got to be “How did we
get here?” so we know where we’re going. I think everybody around the
table, I think I’m speaking in a way that… maybe not the tone, but the
ideas that anybody can agree with. My question to you, and perhaps you
may need to speak to the rest of your staff, is… and this goes back to
the same question I think has already been asked. Exactly where in the
priority list, if AOC were making all the decisions with no direction
from the legislature… in other words, if the legislature isn’t meddling
in the decision-making process – I put it that way on purpose… where
would replacing ACIS be on the priority scale? Would it be first or
would it be third? Would it be… for example, would it be the only thing
that AOC would concentrate on until they got it done and then move on to
other things? That’s what I want to know. [SPEAKER CHANGES] It’s been an
ongoing top priority for many years, and my name’s Tom Murry; I’m with
the AOC as Chief Local Councilor of Government Affairs. This roadmap to
eCourts, I’m going to go back to this chart multiple times. I ask that
you look at it. The green boxes have been accomplished. These green
boxes are steps on replacing ACIS that AOC has been undertaking. Going
through the rest of this presentation, you can see the before and after
green screens that we have already developed. We are there. We are. It
is a top priority and it’s… when you’ve got a system that was built the
year that Senator Jackson was born, you’ve got developers who are in
that retirement phase, and it’s harder and harder to find those folks
and keep those folks. It is a top priority to replace that system so we
can have a modern system that any developer coming right out of school
can work on, versus a legacy green screen. So now we’ll say they’re
cheap to operate. No bandwidth. With browser-based systems, you increase
the need for bandwidth. There’s a whole ‘nother cost structure
associated with. You’ve got to have more servers and all the
infrastructure that goes around that. So we could probably do it faster;
it would increase out maintenance and equipment needs, and so we’ve
tried to be responsible with the resources that you’ve been generous to
give us, but we have made accomplishments, and I would argue… I would
say that it’s our top priority to replace ACIS, and I think like I said,
when you talk to the constituent groups that actually use this system on
a daily basis, they will tell you the progress that we made over the
past six years. [SPEAKER CHANGES] Follow-up.

So when we replace ASIS, do I understand you correctly that the ongoing
development will be done in-house as far as customized software
development and so forth, is that correct?
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Senator Newton. Tom Murray with AOC,
under the current structure, the answer is yes. If we wanted to go to a
vendor-based solution, and that's the choice that needs to be made,
significant capital investment to be able to do that because a major
transition, we would need to use a vendor that is stable. We can't
be changing courthouse vendors every five years and we would cease all
modernization efforts of ASIS at that point. Now, that's a decision
point that needs to be made and at this point we, based on the existing,
I'll another variable to this equation, stable funding. We can't
have a vendor-based solution that has a precarious funding stream
because I can't just pull the rug out and say, "Oh, by the way,
our technology budget got cut this year and the vendor contract has to
be renegotiated." That's going to be difficult. So a stable
funding source and we would cease all modernization efforts and start
the transition, which is probably a three to five year transition, from
migrating all data from the existing Legacy systems to a vendor-based
solution. But that is a decision point that needs, that would alter this
time frame.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Yes.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Mr. Murray, would you agree with me that a stable funding paradigm would
be just as important for the AOC software development office as it would
be that you have a vendor who runs the new system?
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Mr. Murray.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
I would argue that's correct.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
So, in other words, the question of funding is really an irrelevant
question because you got the same dynamic whether you do in-house
development and software writing, and pardon my tongue-in-cheek
expression, pretend that you all are savvs and do it yourself as opposed
to hiring somebody else to do it.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Mr. Murray.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Thank you, Senator Newton. Thank you, Madam Chairman. And the fewer
resources we have for in-house management, the slower the progress goes.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
I'm just going to make a comment, I feel that the Chairs definitely
need to meet with AOC, with Mr. Murray and Mr. Marecic, I think we
definitely need a meeting together. Senator Randleman and then Senator
Jackson.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Thank you, Madam Chair. It's not that we want to seem argumentative,
we don't meant o attack anyone, that's not our purpose. Our
purpose is to plan for making important determinations about
appropriating the money that we will have for our KCS budget and if
we're given a target to reduce then we have to know where can make
those reductions that will have the least impact on those things that we
need to serve. So, Mr. Marecic, I have a couple questions about your ??.
Now, in the staffing for technology, do the application, people that
work in application development, salary-wise where do they rank on that
salary schedule?
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Mr. Marecic, introduce yourself.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Jeff Marecic, AOC. The, if I understand the question right, you're
asking how much a developer gets paid. That ranges based on the
experience level but anywhere from the developer perspective, the people
that write programs, probably in the $70,000 range up into $100,000 a
year. In that group we also have what we call business analysts, the
folks that don't actually do the programming, that help with how
things should flow and those sorts of things. Those, again there are
different levels there, starts at around $50,000 and goes up into the
70's or 80's scenario.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
So, according to Beacon, you have 83 people who are in application
development, you have 61 people

who work in infrastructure and operation support which ??, manages, and
provides support for hardware in the outfit. And then you have three
people who work in planning and management, or project planning, project
management and quality assurance. So, that's a little bit different
than the 85% and then 10%.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Yeah, sure. Jeff Murry, CIO AOC, the categorizations, I think, that
happen in Beacon are a little different than what happens in practice.
We have, we look at our organization a little bit differently than
Beacon does. We have a project management office, which would be some of
those planning people that you're talking about, that has about
eight or nine people in it and there are certain classifications. We
have a set of business analysts that are in the group and are about 25
or so of those. We have developers, the people that actually write the
code, and we have somewhere int he neighborhood of 45 or 50 of those,
and then we have our infrastructure people that take care of all that
other stuff. And so the way we have our organization laid out, it's
based on technology process versus the classifications in Beacon. So
there's a little difference in how we look at it.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Follow-up.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
So you're looking at ?? and we're looking at money.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Yes.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
So of these 83 people who are doing application development, those are
probably, those are higher paid individuals?
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Jeff Murry, AOC, there's a mix of the business analysts that are at
the 50-60-70 range and there's a mix of the developers as well.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Follow-up.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
So are those people in the 85% or the 15%?
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
They're in both. Jeff Murry, AOC. When we look at maintaining
systems, there are a lot of activities that go along with that. Such as
every night we run extra and jobs to feed other systems. We feed our
data approximately 30 or 40 other organizations. So some of those
developers are involved in that process as well.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
One more.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
So we keep information, I'm kind of a black and white kind of
person, I don't really see stuff in grey, ??. So you ?? thinking,
right?
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Yes.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
So, I'd like you to break those divisions down for me in that 85%
and that 15%. Provide that to me and the other members electronically. I
don't expect you to do it this morning but I'm trying to see ??
breaks down ??.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Senator Randleman, thank you. A lot of that 15%/85%, as you know, some
people wear both hats.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
That, I didn't ask about that.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
I'm sorry, okay, she just needs it. You'll send it to all of us,
we'd appreciate it.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Okay, thank you.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
I've got Senator Jackson first and then Senator Lee.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Thank you, Madam Chair. Senator Newton mentioned SAS and I just wanted
to point in a quick comment that SAS was actually a vendor that AOC
contracted with to develop a database called CJLEADS that's mainly
used by law enforcement but has been deemed highly, highly successful.
So there is some precedent for relying on vendors to produce these kinds
of databases. It seems amazing to consider that we would have the entire
wholesale transition of ASIS occur in-house but maybe it's possible.
Just a quick question for Tom Murry, sir, on the one hand your talking
about the transition that's been made away from ASIS and it's
been the top priority for several years and looking at your slides it
looks like there's been progress. On the other hand, you're
saying it's a $100 Million job. I was wondering if you could kind of
bridge that disconnect. What would we need to spend another $100 Million
on? How do we complete this job?
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Certainly, and we're having a conversation with the governor's
office right now about the potential for being a court bond being
included in the bond package and so that's, and we are trying to
help and have a conversation with members of the legislative leadership
as well to talk about just exactly, if we wanted to move at breakneck
speed to have wholesale replacement and get the equipment upgrades,
Kentucky, Kentucky did a courts bond to a much smaller judicial brand
than ours

It was a $28 million bond.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]Follow up.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]So we're looking at what other states have done
from a rapid reset of our technology perspective on the court, on the
judicial branches in trying to look at what North Carolina can learn
from those states through the National Center of State Courts and how we
can, if a major cash infusion came into the court system for massive
upgrades, how long would it take and how much would it cost. We're
developing an answer to that question, and right now the floor, and just
in my mind, we're starting at $100 million.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]Okay. And Mr. Lee?
[SPEAKER CHANGES]I have a question. I apologize for not being here
yesterday, I had to attend another committee meeting so if this was thus
answered, I apologize in advance. Does the AOC and then as a subset IT
have a strategic plan that they developed and followed so that we could
actually kind of open that up and look at what the priorities are and
where you want to go? And then as new people come on board, like
Senator Jackson and I, we can kind of see where you've been and
where you're trying to get to and how that all plays in?
[SPEAKER CHANGES]I think to ??
[SPEAKER CHANGES]Thank you Madame Chairman, thank you Senator Lee.
I'm Tom Rowe with AOC. I think that's road mapped to eCourts,
like I'm gonna keep on coming back to this because that's where
we ultimately want to go, to the direction of the Chief Justice, we want
to see an eCourt's initiative. Part migrating away from ASYS is
part of that because you'll have better data submitted in a better
way to more parties and ASYS cannot function in an eCourt's
environment and we know that.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]All right.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]I'm sorry. My question is just a little bit
broader than ASYS.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]Sure.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]Is there an actual kind of strategic plan that
identifies priorities moving forward and what needs to be accomplished
to get there so that as we go through this process, we can understand as
we're developing the budget and going through, we can kind of see
long term where we're going. So, if there was a strategic plan back
in '06 and someone said it was going to be ten years, we could say,
wait a minute. And I don't know what happened in '06, but is
there like a plan like that, a written plan?
[SPEAKER CHANGES]Certainly. Madame Chairman, with your indulgence, I
might ask John Williams, Senior Deputy Director of AOC to help address
that question.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]Okay, introduce yourself.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]Thank you, Madam Chair, John Williams, I'm the
Senior Deputy Director at AOC, been there for about two years, and
Technology's one of the divisions I oversee. I really welcome this
conversation, it's been a long time coming, and we're all on the
same page, Senator Newton, about our priorities. When I came in, I
reviewed things like the Gartner study that was done in 1999 that set a
course forward for AOC. There was a strategic plan most recently done
with an outside consultant, MTG Consulting, I believe is the company, in
2006 or '07. And there was supposed to be a five year plan, but
we're really still, this ASYS thing is part of what was in that plan
and should have been completed by now. In coming in, I agreed with the
findings of PED study that was published at the end of 2008, that said
that we needed to strengthen our budget and project management controls.
A number of initiatives were undertaken at that time that did that, but
I was not satisfied when I arrived that we had gone far enough. We had
had a leadership change in our Technical Services division, we did a
nationwide search, chose Mr. Merisik who moved here from Oregon after a
successful career there, ten years running their pension plan, IT,
completely modernizing that system, on time, within budget. It
impressed me and AOC a great deal what he had accomplished there.
One of the recurring themes Mr. Murry mentioned is stable funding, the
actual Center for State Courts emphasizes the same thing. That MTG
study laid out a strategic plan for these activities and the legislature
in that same time frame, 2006, '07, '08, massively increased the
technology funding to AOC. And in, I guess, 2008 and '09, most of
the money was taken back as you responded to the crisis caused by the
recession, and most of that money was never committed, people were not
even hired. It was for not people who were dismissed, that was
personnel money for people who were never even hired. I want to say 60,
60 or so people were hired to carry forward this strategic plan, and
they were never even brought on board, because of the response to the
recession.
Now, in that time, we should have created a new strategic plan that made
some assumptions about what a stable funding environment or an
anticipated likely funding environment would be, and we should have sat
down and had that honest discussion and all been on the same page. And
I think we're certainly ready to do that with you now, and I like

the idea of sitting down and talking that through with the chairs so
that we can all see eye-to-eye, but the money was there briefly and then
was pulled back. The ASIS replacement, as one of many projects, is a $25
Million project. We've spent between $800,000 and $1.2 Million over
the last eight years or so, seven years, pursuing that, and that leaves
us far, far, far from the finish line. As you know, in other parts of
state government, the approach to IT has shifted to large project
funding that is reportable to the appropriations committees to say
within this agency, this single large initiative will have its own
budget and will be reported back to the committee individually. We are
not there. We have one technology budget and we've been trying to
break out some resources within that technology budget for these new
development projects. I hope that kind of clarifies where we got, how we
got to where we are today.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Senator Lee
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Just a quick follow-up to, I appreciate your comments but, so the last
strategic plan was done in '06?
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Yes, Senator Lee, and that was a consultant driven plan. We are branched
with over 500 elected officials and we have been putting together a new
governance structure that involves each of those constituent groups.
Susan Frye, Clerk of Superior Court's, serves in our technology
committee to develop that.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
I'm not blaming anyone for anything.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
No, no, no, sir.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
I'm just trying to ask the questions. That's, I understand that
completely, can I make a comment?
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Senator Lee.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
So, when there's a, so I'm new here, so from a strategic
planning perspective in just the private sector, typically the plan is
done and then it's not put on the shelf, it's reviewed every
quarter and updated and as these things happen and as happens in state
government, there's changes, you've only been around for two
years, that's the one common thread that I think folks like myself
can use to review to see where things have gone. And then when budget
cuts come, that strategic plan is altered so that we know when we cut a
budget, that we are going to cause a ten year delay on something that
may be vitally necessary. Otherwise, it's really hard for me,
I'm probably not the sharpest knife int he draw, but it's really
hard for me to conceptualize where we've been and where you want to
go so that we know how to get there. So I would ask that someone dust
off the plan, you said you're working on a plan, but if a plan is
actually established part of that plan would include how you utilize
that plan going forward in the future, updating it quarterly and
modifying it so that there is some common thread through the years that
we all can kind of look at. Just a comment.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
I would say, thank you, thank you all. I would say we definitely need to
go forward, not look back so much now because we can't change what
the past has been. We need to go forward with a plan and we need to work
together. So I'm hoping that we will get that done this year. I know
when I came in 2007, and I have been here longer than some of you all,
Leo was here then, but we had $2 Billion extra instead of deficits. We
had $2 Billion and they had to have all these new projects. That's
when we got the East Carolina Dental School, for instance. Then other
things that had to be had, so you grab the money when you can, so
because then it did, it went downhill from there and we have been
struggling, all of us, since then. But we need to be sure if we do go
with any kind of outside person, company, that we need to know their
history because we do not need what happened to DHHS to happen to JPA.
Okay, yes, Rena.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Quick question, Rena Turner, representative from District 84. I'm
interested in knowing the list of companies that they see overnight
he's talking about, I think he said about 30 companies or
transactions that they have to complete overnight. If we could have a
list of those.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Just get us all that list, that would be great. Thank you very much.
Okay, anyboody else? I'll give you another chance. Okay, William,
back over to you.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Thank you, Madam Chair. I think a lot of this may have been covered in
the discussion. The others, let me know if I'm starting to, if
I'm going back over ground bits you don't want to hear about
anymore. Okay, we'll just, this points out that the CCIS is a major
project that is undergoing right now and that AOC is moving towards an
?? project

I have a few screenshots of the CCIS. This is a front-end system right
now. I believe there's a database associated with it but it also
does feed off of ASIS. Beyond this, I've listed a number of
AOC's other applications NCAWARE is a statewide warrant repository
that works in a real time. This is mostly used by local law enforcement
and magistrates. I'm sorry, I guess I should talk about everything
on that page, eCitation, talked about this a little bit, this is also
used by local law enforcement to see citation information. I'm
sorry, can you all hear me? Okay, sorry, eCitation is a joint venture
with state highway patrol, feed information into ASIS. It was the first
of its kind in 1999 and the discovery automation system feeds
information to the DA's. Also payNCticket, online citation payments
and the magistrate video project is a relatively new project to allow
magistrates to communicate through video with local law enforcement,
which may solve some of the problems with getting magistrates in to the
right place at the right time. So this was piloted in 2012, at the end
of fiscal year 13/14 it had been implemented in 39 districts and
counties, excuse me. And this is a map of where it is and where it is
going as of January of this year. So there's a lot of roll out here.
There are some counties that have chosen not to participate and I can
keep you all apprised of what's going on with this project, too.
This will probably help alleviate some of the magistrate problems
though, in some of the more far flung counties. Further AOC technology,
this is mostly civil technology. There's the VCAP, which is the
civil case processing system, there's eFiling, which was piloted in
2009 and did not have a lot of success. It was rolled out in Chowan,
Wake, and Davidson Counties. There were 1,993 eFilings, files that had
been used in that system between 2009 and 2014, however, Alamance County
piloted a domestic violence eFiling project that has been far more
successful since Alamance County rolled it out. They've had 3,410
files sent through the eFiling system in one year. AOC is using what
they learned with Alamance County to roll out eFiling and start moving
that towards doing that statewide on the civil side and then I think
they were going to push to the criminal side after that. There are also
Casewise and Jwise, are two management systems that AOC supports. This
is a map, I believe it's in Representative Murray's
presentation, showing technology facilities throughout the state run by
AOC. This is a graph of AOC's technology services budget history.
The 14/15 numbers do not take into account the reserve that was still in
place, which is why they may seem high for that time. So there was a
question asked yesterday about the $500,000 cut and we will cover that
when we follow-up with AOC. Finally, challenges with AOC technology. I
sort of feel like this may be redundant. We've just talked about
there was a lack of vision in the 2000's, ??, and a lot of new
systems were built but did not seem to be a major overarching push to
replace the old systems. The stagnation is visible to the public,
although we hear that the public is going to be using a new web based
system. At this time, in court rooms across the state, the public goes
in, they use ASIS, they want to find something, they're dealing with
the mainframe. I do what to make a point that the older technology is
very useful for people who have been doing it for a long time and
I'm sure the clerks know that people have gotten used to ASIS and
FMS, can do it without even looking at it, however, in terms of new
hires and

when we talked about the turnover in the clerk's offices yesterday I
think they find that very counterintuitive and technically it's what
I have to say about technology.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Thank you. Senator Newton has a, pass first, okay.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Thank you, Madam Chair. The, William, if I could, I may have missed this
from yesterday, I'm not sure if it's been explained, the DCIS
system that ??, is that built on ASIS or is that something totally
different?
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Thank you, Madam Chair. It is totally different but it does use a, so it
provides both a front-end for information that is already in ASIS and
further database capabilities that beyond what ASIS can do. So it was
intended to replace ASIS at first and I believe at this point it is kind
of in the in-between stage where it still uses ASIS for some
functionality and it has a separate, more modern database for other
functionality.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Follow-up.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Follow-up.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
So, and if you can answer it, good, if not, we'll turn to AOC, but
so CCIS is built in such a way that whenever we migrate away from ASIS
it should be able to make the transition and continue to be a useful
platform?
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes sir, that is my understanding, that CCIS
will outlive ASIS.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
The, follow-up? The public defender's office, I noticed in your
slide and I thought I had understood, is on CCIS, have you gotten any
information from AOC about why that would be necessary for a public
defender's office to be ?? mainframe system?
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Thank you, Madam Chair. The General Assembly put a provision in the 2012
budget directing AOC and IDS to work together on a more updated system
for IDS. They were still using the case management system, which is a
legacy system, much like ASIS and the FMS. So the CCISPD, I believe, is
a new project that has not gone very far. I believe they are still in
the process of hiring people to handle that. So, yes?
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Let me, maybe I didn't ask my question very, very well to get at
what I'm trying to find out. So how many, what was the largest
number of employees in the largest public defender's office? How
large of an office are we talking about?
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
I'm afraid, I see Tom Maher back there, I'm afraid, Madam Chair,
I might have to ask him if he knows.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Tom Maher, please.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Tom Maher, Executive Director of IDS. Our largest office is in
Mecklenburg and I think there's int he neighborhood of 60-plus
employees there.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Follow-up. And so, thank you, Mr. Maher, and I may have another question
for you, ??, the follow-up is that's the size basically of a large
law firm or medium sized law firm, depending on how you want to look at
it, what I don't understand is why that needs to be, why that law
firm needs to be connected to the mainframe database systems? Most law
firms are not connected to mainframe databases ??. They email the state
but they aren't wired into to the same systems and I understand the
public defender's office has the ?? and basically it's a
publicly funded criminal defense office, firm, if you will. And so my
question is why is that necessary? Why is that, what is the benefit of
doing it that way as opposed to buying and operating a stay in the line
case management software like every other law firm in the state of North
Carolina?
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Mr. Maher, do you have an answer?
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Tom Maher, Executive Director of IDS. The benefit, Senator Newton, is
that the data which is used by the public defender's is
automatically downloaded from ASIS, and ultimately whatever replaces
ASIS. So in the morning, the public defender's office, which, and
some of them get hundreds of cases in a day, they don't have to do
the data entry and the only data I believe they enter is the name of the
attorney which then gets pushed back so the court system automatically
gets the attorney's name. And so there is a benefit to having very
rich

data very quickly without the cost of support staff entering that data
into the case management system.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Follow-up.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Is there a program or a plan under way to provide that kind of
efficiency for all of the private counsel who are assigned as defense
attorneys?
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
There is not, Thomas Maher, Executive Director of IDS. There is not, we
had looked in to, when I first started working, whether we could
develop, for example, online fee application systems that would be
populated from that information. I think there is a concern, and I will
let AOC address this, the private lawyers don't do just
court-appointed cases. They also obviously do retained work and the AOC
may have contracts about criminal record searches, for example, that
they would be reluctant to have the retain counsel get the same access
that the public defenders who have no retain counsel. But the short
answer is, and it may also be a resource issue, that there's no plan
at this point to create a similar case management system that appointed
private attorneys could use and get the same benefit of the data.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Do you want this answer now or do you want him to send it to us? Okay,
follow-up.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
So what I'm interested in knowing, have there been any kind of those
cost-benefit analyses done to determine whether or not it makes sense
from an efficiency/cost standpoint to maintain public defenders offices
on this mainframe database case management system that we're trying
to implement versus a standalone case management software that
essentially might be able to be ?? and customized like all other law
firms in ?? trying to do. Has anybody done any kind of cost-benefit
analysis, do we even have an idea how much more or less it's costing
us through the mainframe approach as opposed to off the shelf
standalone.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Mr. Maher.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Tom Maher, Executive Director of IDS. When the General Assembly
indicated that AOC and IDS should split the cost of replacing the
existing CNS, the first thing we did with AOC is to issue an RFI to look
at private vendors to find out what was available in the marketplace for
replacements. The problem turned out that all of them charged
significantly more than the cost of basically taking CCI's DA and
changing it to work for the public defenders. Now, all of those vendors,
and I think this is true in most public defender systems, interact,
their software's designed to interact with the court systems and to
download that type of data. So in most situations where you've got a
statewide or a large scale public defense system, there are case
management systems just like DA's case management systems are
designed to interact with the court system. So we have never looked at,
because we've always had CMS, we've always had that interface,
what would it cost to stop having that interface, spend less maybe for a
case management system, but then have support staff who had to get the
information and put it into the system. We've never done that study
because CMS has been around for a very long time and we've had that
interface.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Follow-up.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
So the short answer is there's an assumption that there is an
efficiency ?? but there has never been any analyses?
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Correct, Tom Maher.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Okay.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Follow-up.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Follow-up on a separate matter. I thank you, Mr. Maher, I appreciate
your information. The video, the national video system slide, there were
a number of counties, and if this was covered yesterday and I missed it
I'm so sorry for that and you can tell me later. But, why are the ??
others doing it, especially counties that have been in the same judicial
district? I'll use as an example my home, Nash County, is in it but
Edgecombe and Wilson are not. Why is that and is that a problem or a
concern?
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
I would have to ask AOC about that. I don't know enough about that
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
Mr. Murry.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
At the end of the day, Tom Murry, AOC, at the end of the day it's a
decision by the chief district court judge and law enforcement officers
that it's a preference that they not use that at the local level and
this is an example of AOC not being heavy handed and forcing local
jurisdictions to change their course of business even when it might
produce efficiencies. If they don't want to use the technology, we
don't force them to do that. We support, AOC supports that local
jurisdiction, only 39 have chosen not to use it and it's been a
pretty quick uptake.
[SPEAKER CHANGES]
One last follow-up

real quick, if I could. Could you tell us what any or some of the
reasons are why they don’t want to do it, why their choice…? I’m trying
to imagine why it would be there. [SPEAKER CHANGES] It’s across the
board. I think it’s a little bit of self-preservation and adversity to
change, and so if they think they need four magistrates… and I think
there’s a concern that if we get too efficient, you’ll take away some of
our magistrates. [SPEAKER CHANGES] Thank you. [SPEAKER CHANGES] Senator
Randleman. [SPEAKER CHANGES] ?? [SPEAKER CHANGES] Thank you, Madam
Chair. I believe that that is a statewide system, the discovery
automation system. [SPEAKER CHANGES] ?? Yes, it is a statewide system,
and it’s ?? [SPEAKER CHANGES] It’s being recorded. Just wait just a
moment to answer. Just wait just a moment. [SPEAKER CHANGES] ?? It’s
another one of the systems where we provide for people, and if they
choose to use it, then they use it. [SPEAKER CHANGES] Do we have any
more questions? Representative Boles. [SPEAKER CHANGES] Just a comment.
For the last two days, it’s kind of interesting that having ?? to have a
statewide unified court system. What I’ve been hearing for the last two
days is that the local are developing their own to solve their own
problems in this ??. Going down from the state down, it seems like the
counties are solving their problems and it’s coming from the bottom up,
and the state’s trying to catch up with itself, and as Ms. Murry just
stated, everybody’s trying to preserve their own little identity, and
they’re not heavy-handed, and somehow I think we need to have… you know
what I’ve always said about family court. It’s not a unified court
system, and so I think we need to get back to it somehow, but it’s a
little discouraging that… well it’s encouraging that the counties are
solving their own problems, and we’re learning from it, but it’s
discouraging the way they’re doing it is going. [SPEAKER CHANGES] Any
other comments? It’s been a very interesting one. We’ll be here
tomorrow; same time, same room. Adjourned.